The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) has published the TIA-1178 FLO System Information Specification, the FLO Forum announced last month.
Publication of the specification creates a standards-based environment in which the advance information required to populate a user interface program guide can be delivered to consumers in real time. The specification is the ninth FLO standard approved by the TIA, following the publication of the related service-layer FLO Conditional Access Specification TIA-1146.
The ability to deliver program and related data from the FLO network to FLO devices provides consumers with the information required to select and subscribe to mobile programming and services from their device. This system information ultimately enables the device to locate and display selected streaming video content or locate and store non-real-time media content for later viewing.
The FLO System specification also supports a flexible monetization environment made up of different commercial subscription packages. These packages consist of tiers of service, each of which contains a predetermined set of channels. The packages also have additional data, such as pricing information, order of display weighting and rating information.
